The Class

In Laurent Cantet's The Class, high school teacher Francois Marin (Francois Begaudeau) is shocked to learn that his students routinely leave the lower-class fringe environs of the 20th Arrondissement for the more glamorous precincts of central Paris. The movie does not follow them on these excursions, containing itself within the struggling public school it documents. This initially jars. Faculty introductions and rote grammar lessons dominate the first hour of The Class, which opens on the first day back from summer vacation. Francois teaches French to a group of “nice, but tough,” mostly immigrant students. He’s a delicate wisp of a man (and thus the froggiest of the bunch) perpetually struggling for control of his classroom. But the movie diffuses the tension inherent to the ghetto-high-school-in-peril genre with lessons on the imperfect subjunctive. Miraculously the audience does not stampede the box office for a refund, and instead settles into the rhythms of this affecting film.

Here is the rare Issue movie that doesn’t feel like a public service announcement. To use a venerable maxim of high school writing classes it shows rather than tells. And what it shows is a mélange of diverse adolescent faces united only by their blemishes. These are teenagers rarely seen in American movies outside of Gus Van Sant’s inter-Oscar bait experimental offerings. The kids are roundly excellent, but sisters-in-sass Esmeralda (Esmerelda Quertani) and Khoumba (Rachel Regulier) stand out alongside sullen Souleyman (Frank Keita), shy Louise (Louise Grinberg) and ambitious Nassim (Nassim Amrabt). These descriptors sound reductive but The Class eschews the nerd-jock-princess-goth paradigms that have defined the best and worst high school movies since John Hughes established the template. Its characters are not two-dimensional ambassadors of their racial or ethnic backgrounds either, a pitfall of the multiculti genre. The students are empathetic because they cannot be distilled to a single ingredient. Insolent and indifferent one moment and reverentially engaged the next, The Class’ teens prove that an inconsistent character (particularly one suffering daily trig quizzes) is not necessarily a weak one.

The most compelling scenes avoid schmaltz but still open tear ducts. A boy named Carl reads an essay on his likes (“helping my mom around the house”) and dislikes (“visiting my brother in jail”). An intelligent student’s parents beam when Francois praises their son despite a limited understanding of the French he speaks. Inarticulate Souleyman excels at a photo collage of his reticent mother, earning a rare commendation from Francois that leaves him in gleeful disbelief. Heartrending, perceptive scenes make The Class an anomaly: too grounded in reality too feel like typical entertainment and too emotionally potent to register as a documentary.

If The Class makes one slight stumble it’s in the glacial exposition of the second hour’s dramatic conflict. Maybe the movie needed the sort of structure and suspense this dilemma provides (it involves a student’s potential expulsion) but it does not entirely jive with the first half’s freeform pleasures.

While Cantet's import is about messy, xenophobic modern-day France, its take on education and growing up will resonate with most viewers. And its optimistic theme of immigrant ambition overcoming the odds is uniquely American.

Oscar '09

The theme of this years Academy Awards is that there is no theme. Last year’s ceremony showcased a slew of violent, depressive takes on the American psyche, with No Country for Old Men proving a superior downer to There Will Be Blood. Martin Scorcese dominated 2007, basking in long-overdue Academy accolades for The Departed. Past shows have been defined by individual blockbusters (Forrest Gump, Titanic, Gladiator) that left their edgier, critically adored counterparts (Pulp Fiction, LA Confidential, Traffic) fighting for the scraps, often in the screenplay categories. All five best picture nominees in 1997 were independently financed, a momentary triumph for the indie movement that in retrospect was its death knell.

But despite many favorites this year, the top awards will likely be scattered among several different movies that are diverse in narrative and production.  

Slumdog Millionaire is the frontrunner for the big prize. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (stars, schmaltz, vaguely edgy director) and Milk (Sean Penn, topicality, patting of liberal backs) are locks for nominations.  Frost/Nixon and The Dark Knight are favorites for the remaining two slots.  But I’m going to say that Gran Torino will sneak in and upset Frost/Nixon. Frost has been an awards show also-ran and hasn’t generated the audience buzz or box-office scratch of the other nominations. Gran Torino has the Clint Eastwood pedigree and recently broke out as a surprise box-office champ in its wide release. This means a bigger audience for a ceremony whose recent ratings have been as anemic as its featured starlets.  Apply the same box office argument on a much larger scale to The Dark Knight. At a time when increasingly small niche audiences are watching their movies on an ever-multiplying number of platforms, a well-received $525 million-generating cultural behemoth (and the awards campaign that money affords) is too big to ignore.

As usual, the nominated directors will follow suit with Best Picture. Expect Ron Howard to sneak in ahead of The Dark Knight’s Christopher Knight if Frost/Nixon indeed goes without a Picture nod.

Not much mystery here. Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler) and Sean Penn (Milk) lead the pack. Gran Torino’s Clint Eastwood (in what he says is his last performance) and Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) are locks. Brad Pitt is the presumed fifth nominee; his star power combined with Button’s epic scope and digital wizardry will likely result in a nod. But many reviews were lukewarm and he’ll probably show up at the ceremony regardless (see: ratings). If he’s snubbed, look for Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) to take his place.

Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road) and Meryl Streep (Doubt) won’t be losing any sleep on nomination eve. Kristen Scott Thomas earned raves for her restrained turn in I’ve Loved You So Long and Winslet aside this year’s likely acting nominees are unusually light on the foreign thespians the Academy loves. Perceived wisdom suggests Angelina Jolie (The Changeling) in the fifth slot. But there was grumbling in that movie’s initial reviews over her Oscar-baiting histrionics. That and what I feel and hope to be St. Brangelina fatigue will open the slot up to Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky), another Brit and an unknown (the Academy fawns over those too) in a very star-studded category.

It’s all about Heath. Despite rumblings of a backlash against the traveling eulogy parade, Josh Brolin (Milk), Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder) and Phillip Seymour Hoffmann (Doubt) will all wake up Thursday morning happy to be nominated and in no rush to write a speech. The fifth spot is about as open as any in the major categories: James Franco (for Milk, which could double as a write-in vote for his great job in Pineapple Express), Tom Cruise (though two nominations for a comedy like Tropic Thunder would be pushing it), Dev Patel (someone in Slumdog has to get an acting nod, right?) and Michael Shannon (a standout handicapped by limited screen time in Revolutionary Road). I'll go with Franco for double-timing it. 

This category is a perennial question mark. Frontrunners are rare and out-of-the-blue winners (Marisa Tomei, Marcia Gay Harden) are frequent.  Viola Davis is the kind of relative unknown this category favors and her brief but potent performance in Doubt could make her the leader of the pack. Kate Winslet’s a sure thing for a nomination, but The Reader lacks Revolutionary Road’s momentum and prestige. There is always a spot or two reserved at the Oscars for whatever Woody Allen movie came out that year, so Penelope Cruz is a safe bet for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Tomei will be up for it again for The Wrestler (never underestimate the appeal of a hooker/stripper with a heart of a gold). I’ll give Debra Winger the fifth slot for Rachel Getting Married—as Mickey Rourke and countless others can attest, Hollywood loves embracing its prodigal sons and daughters. 

Wendy and Lucy

It’s the rare movie Q&A where the director has to contend with a dog. But such a canine intrusion can be tolerated when the mutt (Lucy) belongs to the director (Kelly Reichardt) and shares top billing in her latest film, Wendy and Lucy. Reichardt recently spoke with Star critic Marshall Fine at the Emelin Theater in Mamaroneck. And despite a rambunctious Lucy (“She’s clearly not trained”, Reichardt explained, making the dog’s finely calibrated “performance” all the more impressive), the director shed light on her critically-appraised (and suddenly topical) feature.

Wendy and Lucy is a minimalist movie. The barebones plot—girl (Wendy, played by a subtle Michelle Williams) loses dog (Lucy, starring as herself) on her trip north to Alaska—is unaccompanied by music and goes for long stretches without dialogue. Reichardt shot it in two weeks and hunkered down in her Queens apartment for six months of editing. But there is a warmth to the film that belies its precise production. Cinematographer Sam Levy bathes the woods outside of Portland in an amber glow. A nighttime scene with a group of runaway teenagers and their pierced, prematurely weathered faces illuminated only by a bonfire is particularly effective.  The friendship Lucy strikes with a security guard (Wally Dalton) is her lone (human) beacon; just about every other character she meets represents a roadblock. 

                Reichardt wanted to make a movie about people “without a net.” Wendy doesn’t have a family, education or savings account to fall back on. “You can’t get a job without a job; can’t get a house without a house,” says the guard.  While these limitations can be tragic (the film was inspired by Hurricane Katrina and the brutal class divide it exposed), they also allow Wendy to fall off the grid in an America where it is increasingly difficult to do so.  Reichardt explained that the Portland of the film is meant to look anonymous; its superstores stand as oases in massive parking lots just as they do in every other town.  The big box strip mall ennui of the modern road trip (what would Kerouac think?) compels Lucy to keep running toward an unknown future until she’s practically out of land. Wendy might be rootless, but is there anything out there worth being rooted down to?

                It’s hard to ignore the relevance of a film with a broke, homeless heroine who just scrapes by on the quest for a better life. But Reichardt (who shot the film a year before the credit crisis left all of us couch-diving for nickels) shudders to think of her movies as soapboxes. The director omitted character exposition (an injury that left Wendy’s ankle in a brace is unexplained) and Psych 101 lecturing (“I’m going to say I didn’t hear that,” she responded to a question about the lack of maternal figures).  

                While unsentimental, Wendy and Lucy is affecting. Reichardt has empathy to spare—she spoke of the movie’s “gutter punk” transients like a worried mother—but does not romanticize Wendy’s struggle.  She has made a lean movie for lean times, refusing to prey on audience emotion. Even despite that adorable dog.  

Hey Mickey, what's my line?

Mickey Rourke disappeared from the public eye years ago. And for a half hour, the packed house at the Times Center on December 8th thought he’d pulled a similar act on his talk with New York Times reporter Lynn Hirschberg and director Darren Aronofsky. But he eventually made an entrance in a pinstriped suit and purple John Lennon shades that he wore despite the dimmed auditorium setting. There’s serious Oscar buzz for Rourke’s turn as Randy “The Ram” Robinson in Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. Despite his bad boy image, Rourke wouldn’t blow this shot at career redemption with a missed appearance.

Rourke all but shoved the moderator off the stage as he entertained the crowed with expletive-laden self-deprecation. But mostly Rourke offered effusive praise for the director who inspired what he called the best work of his roller coaster career. He’d never seen Aronofsky before they had a meeting in the Meatpacking District (“Uh-huh. I’ll always call it the Village.”). Despite Aronofsky pulling up on a green bicycle and wearing a yellow helmet, Rourke “could just tell he had a huge set of balls.” Initially reluctant to do a wrestling movie with a director “whose only exercise comes from buttoning his suit,” Rourke came to see him as “one of the greats who only come around every thirty years. To me, he’s the new Coppola.”

He needed the help. The years Rourke spent boxing hindered rather than prepared him for the role. Boxers look down their disfigured noses at wrestlers. The broad, theatrical fighting moves of WWE matches are anathema to the hunched stances and quick, intricate jabs required of successful boxers.

Six grueling months of training humbled him. His trainer, a former member of the Israeli army (who would “put that cap thing on” whenever they hit the gym during Shabbat) had to push him up and guide him down the stairs of his TriBeCa walkup. He bonded with the wrestlers he met and learned the business, for better (a backstage camaraderie that brightens the often bleak film) and worse (life-altering injuries, a dependence on “vitamins” that Rourke mentioned with a wink).

Rourke has not seen The Wrestler. He won’t for “a few years” He never looks back on his movies until they’re long gone from the theaters since he only looks for their flaws. As Aronofsky said, “he is a man who is absolutely impossible to compliment.” The actor even tried to leave the stage when Hirschberg announced she would be showing a clip from the film. After the moderator shot him down (perhaps out of fear he would never return) he compromised by sticking his fingers in his ears and closing his eyes.

Whatever confidence Rourke lacks in his performances has not changed the work ethic behind them. A graduate of New York’s Actor’s Studio, the Times called him “one of the few true method actors of today.” Aronofsky noted the rewarding challenge of such an understated actor playing a character whose trade demands hamming it up. “Anger is easy,” Rourke said of the Ram’s wrestling scenes and tempter tantrums. It was the longing and regret called for in scenes between Randy and his estranged daughter Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood) that took an emotional toll. The actors met on camera. Aronofsky explained that “the daughter is a woman who only knows her celebrity father through imagery and that’s just how Evan knew of Mickey.” It’s the kind of authenticity that permeates the film and has made its star an awards season frontrunner.

Whatever praise that Rourke continues to receiving on his comeback tour is unlikely to go to his head. A member of the audience recalled that Rourke had once said in an interview that he could teach anyone to act in fifteen minutes. “Sorry, I was all messed up when I said that,” he admitted. “I think had a court date the next morning.”

City by the Fay

There’s a tension between the political and the personal in Milk that is shared by director Gus Van Sant and the man his compelling film brings to life. Milk begins in a New York subway station in 1970, with Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), a gay, closeted 40 year-old, picking up the cherubic Scott (and endearing James Franco). The pair head to the Castro, San Francisco’s burgeoning gay enclave. Milk has no plan, but quickly finds himself at the forefront of a revolution.

San Francisco’s, and the Castro’s, place in the contemporary imagination make it hard to believe that just forty years ago, working-class old-timers made the city inhospitable towards gays. But Milk is surrounded by resistance and brutality that inspire him to start a movement in his modest camera storefront. He becomes the first openly gay man elected to major office. From there, he battles conservative foes on the national stage (Anita Bryant, orange juice spokeswoman-cum-Patron Saint of Bible Belt Bigotry) and municipal halls (family values champion Dan White, played with an effective mix of creepiness and vulnerability by Josh Brolin).

Van Sant’s recent films have been restrained exercises in style (Elephant, Gerry, Last Days, Paranoid Park) that abandoned traditional narrative for sometimes gorgeous and sometimes ponderous lyricism. With Milk the director is tempered by three timeworn genres—the biopic, the docudrama and the Issue movie—that often mute their subjects, reducing them to textbook blurbs. Milk avoids this fate and provides an engaging portrait despite a first half that is too reliant on archival footage and Penn's gratuitous voiceover narration.

The director’s occasional trademark flourishes (slow motion, freeze-frames, loooong tracking shots) distract in on an otherwise staid film, but solid, straightforward storytelling triumphs. Penn also dials down his usual histrionics in a subdued, poignant and at times funny performance—is Milk his first character since Jeff Spiccoli to have a sense of humor?

Milk’s political insights comprise some of its most absorbing moments. But Van Sant does not spell out why Harvey Milk tirelessly threw himself into the machine. He was a successful politician, but not a natural. (He lost his first three bids for office.) He was well-liked (with a few glaring exceptions) but not above getting down and dirty and trading favors. But the big question is whether Milk’s political career owed a greater debt to a moral calling or sheer ambition.

This dilemma makes Scott one of the film’s most intriguing characters. Milk could be swayed by a suicidal gay teenager calling from across the country. He mentions that three of his four boyfriends killed themselves rather than step out of the closet. There are emotional reasons for him to seek change. But Scott delivers an ultimatum: me or the campaign. And despite years of longing after the split, Milk lets him leave without an argument. It’s a testament to Franco that his performance elevates Scott above romantic lynchpin. What could have been a peripheral character winds up exposing Milk’s emotional handicap, putting a welcome/humanizing dent in the halo.

Harvey Milk brought progress. But Milk’s closing credits remind the audience of the AIDS epidemic that shortly followed his death. And Proposition 6, the legislation proposed in the film that would prohibit gays from teaching in public schools, brings Proposition 8 to mind. Milk used to open speeches with the line “I want to recruit you.” Hopefully the film will do the same and usher in a new generation of change.

Houston Street

The recent closure of Avenue A’s Pioneer Theater set off another round of hand-wringing over the sorry state of indie film and the diminished audience appetite—even in New York!—for avant-garde cinema. The Pioneer is a major loss. Eccentric retrospectives focused exclusively on Luis Guzman flicks and 42nd Street Smut Films of the Late 70s. And it might be the only movie theater in the world to lay claim to both a Robert Altman Q&A and a recurring double bill of Poultrygeist and Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie. But there are still a number of venerable arthouse theaters that endure. And a number of them are located right along Houston Street, just a stone’s throw from the Pioneer’s old stomping grounds.

The Landmark Sunshine (Houston between Eldridge and Christie) is a spiffy newcomer to the New York indie scene. It opened in a converted vaudeville theater in 2001. Landmark screens relatively mainstream independent movies (current options include Synecdoche, New York and Happy-Go-Lucky) for mind-bogglingly long runs. (Man on Wire has been there since July.) This theater stands out in the Houston Street crowd for remarkably tush-friendly stadium seats, perhaps explaining its frequent red-carpet premieres.

Across Houston Street on 2nd Avenue and 2nd Street is the Anthology Film Archives. Founded in 1970, it has operated out of its distinctive brick home (a former courthouse) for thirty years, seemingly without a single cosmetic touchup. The theater emphasizes experimental (very) early cinema, shorts, foreign film and avant-garde work of the 60s and 70s. Recent repertories examined the New York vigilante genre, the Polish director Andrzej Wajda and contemporary Turkish cinema. Anthology sates the most obscure cinematic appetites. Chomping at the bit for Paraguayan Hammock, the 160 minute long movie about, well, little more than a Paraguayan hammock? Anthology is the place for you.

The Angelika (Houston and Mercer) opened in 1989 during the heady days of the American indie explosion. It’s defiantly 90s: a coffeehouse monopolizes the entire ground floor and its marquee makes it seem like a Miramax annex. These days the Angelika runs the most mainstream fare of the Houston crew and skips the retrospectives and midnight movies that set its peers apart from the multiplex herd. Still, the Angelika is an institution and a uniquely New York one—don’t fret over the shaking floor; it’s just the 6 train rumbling down below.

In 2005, the IFC Center replaced the Waverly Theater on 6th Avenue just above Houston Street. The IFC runs shorts before all of its screenings—sometimes a blessing and sometimes a fate worse than Fandango commercials. Its slate of new movies consists of festival favorites that otherwise would not have seen the light of day. (This is New York’s House of Mumblecore.) The midnight movie is religion here—Buffy: The Musical and El Topo are perennial favorites. You can also count on the IFC reviving either a Lynch or a Bergman movie on any given weekend. Another Lynchian quirk: the concession stand serves a roast trademarked by the master of the surreal himself.

Walk west down Houston and you’ll find Film Forum, the granddaddy of New York arthouses. As with actual granddaddy’s (which many of its patrons are), Film Forum’s programming can smell a little musty, but God you’ll miss it when it’s gone. Like the Met, this is where you go for the European masters: Godard, Truffaut, Fellini, Bergman. It’s not all repertory though; the theater was the first outside the festival circuit to screen Lou Reed’s Berlin and will soon run Wendy and Lucy, Kelly’s Reichardt’s hotly anticipated collaboration with Michelle Williams.

Whether you’re looking for subtitles or sexploitation, animated shorts or Renoir marathons, the Houston Street crawl will likely deliver.

Lifelines

Danny Boyle has a flair for the apocalyptic. Trainspotting’s junkies famously dived into a scummy toilet for a hit. 28 Days Later conjured an eerie, strangely beautiful London depopulated by all but rats and zombies. And the scientists in Sunshine were on a mission to blow up the sun to save an ailing earth. Slumdog Millionaire, the director’s latest, has plenty of misery to go around, but it’s wrapped up in a tidy (albeit clever) romantic bow that makes its characters’ tribulations feel a bit contrived. Still, Slumdog Millionaire is an unabashed epic and a compelling one at that, so viewers can forgive its genre conventions.

Slumdog Millionaire has been described as Dickens transplanted to millennial Mumbai. Jamal is eighteen years old and about to hit the jackpot on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. But he’s not after the money. Rather, he hopes that his performance wins over Natika, the girl of his dreams. Jamal’s life story (abject poverty and time spent in a seriously deranged “orphanage”) and his budding romance with Natika are related via flashbacks that explain how a lowly chaiwalla (tea server) knows answers that have stopped even the country’s upper-crust lawyers and doctors in their tracks.

Boyle’s movies alternately revere and subvert or modernize tired genre tropes. 28 Days Later was a zombie movie, but its zombies didn’t lumber; they hauled ass. Slumdog Millionaire alludes to Bollywood, India’s gargantuan and often garish movie industry, and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle employs the same vibrant color palette. But Boyle doesn’t shy away from the country’s underbelly. (Indian censors are expected to have a field day.) Audiences pulled in by Fox Searchlight’s sunny advertising campaign—“A buoyant hymn to life!”—will be shocked by much of the film’s violence and despair.

The rags portion of this Horatio Alger tale is more compelling than the riches that Jamal and his malevolent brother Salim (a complex character well-played by Madhur Mittal) acquire. Their progress parallels Mumbai’s transformation into a modern, skyscraping metropolis where luxury glass towers replace filthy, destitute slums. (Jamal, in a funny bit, works at a call center.) Boyle takes an ambivalent view on the city’s evolution. Does it owe more to Jamal’s good-hearted pluck and fortunate destiny (“It is written”) or Salim’s criminal ruthlessness? In the end it is a composite of the two, but Boyle is more interested in the painful means that accompany such a metamorphosis than the end.

Slumdog Millionaire has many joyous moments and such likeable characters that the audience winds up rooting for them. But you can’t help but think that Boyle is a bit hesitant about a happy ending.